Access Switchboard Forms

Many people overlook the switchboard feature of Microsoft Access but it does provide a very quick and easy front-end for a simple database system. A switchboard is a form which acts as a menu to the rest of your database. It has a number of buttons, each of which leads to another form, another switchboard or to a simple command like running a report. The Access Switchboard Manager is a wizard which lets you build a simple hierarchy allowing the user to navigate between the main areas of the application.

The example illustrated here is the front-end to our enquiry-tracking database. This application records enquiries from clients and the names of the people who made these enquiries. The main switchboard lets the user go to the Client, Enquiry or People switchboards and work with those areas of the database or to go to the Reports switchboard and run various reports. The database application is much larger than this and the main body is full of VBA code providing links between forms, automating common tasks and validating data entry but the entry point to the whole system was built as a simple set of switchboards with the wizard.

Creating a switchboard

Microsoft give us a wizard, the Switchboard Manager, to create and modify switchboards. This tool is in different places in different versions of Access. In Access 97 it is under Add-ins on the Tools menu, in Access XP it is under Database Utilities on the Tools menu.

A rather worrying dialog appears the first time that you open the Switchboard Manager:

Pay no attention to the warning icon and just click Yes. The Switchboard Manager will appear with a single default entry named Main Switchboard. Click the Edit button and change the Switchboard Name to something more suitable to your own database. The word "(Default)" always appears in the manager window to show you which switchboard will appear first. It doesn't appear on screen in your application.

Adding new switchboards

Like any Wizard, the Switchboard Manager asks you to select from a series of options at every step as it leads you through the process. This makes getting started a little difficult because you can't add anything to the main switchboard until that item already exists in the switchboard system. The first thing to do then is to add all the subsidiary switchboards that you are going to need. Click the New button and enter the name of a new switchboard when the Create New dialog appears. Keep doing this until you have all the second-level switchboards that you are going to need. In our system we added switchboards named Client, Enquiry, People and Reports.

Once these lower level switchboards exist you can go back to your main switchboard and start adding entries to it. Click the Edit button then make changes to the Edit Switchboard Item form that appears:

The Text entry will appear saying "New Switchboard Command". Change this to the wording you want the user to see. Leave the Command as "Go to Switchboard" and pick the switchboard that you want from the dropdown list.

This dropdown list is the reason why you have to define the lower-level switchboards before you can finish the design of the main one. It's annoying but it does force you to spend a little time thinking about the structure of the application before you start working on it.

Adding forms

As with the lower-level switchboards, the forms have to exist before the wizard will let you add them to the switchboard structure. If the form exists then the Switchboard Manager gives you two options in the dropdown list of commands: Open Form in Add Mode and Open Form in Edit Mode. Splitting the functions like this gives a consistent appearance to the whole system. Users will always see similar pages in front of them. In our example the Clients option leads them to a switchboard offering "Add Client" and "Edit Client" and a couple of more complex options. The "Enquiry" page looks much the same.

Navigation

The structure created by the Switchboard Manager does not automatically give you a way of going back up the tree. Remember to add a "Return to main switchboard" entry after you've added the entries for forms and reports on each switchboard. The main switchboard needs a different approach to let the user leave the application and close the database.

Select the main switchboard on the Switchboard Manager dialog. Click New as usual to add a new entry but select Exit Application from the dropdown list of commands.

Improving the appearance of the switchboard

Despite the number of different buttons and captions you will see as you test the switchboard there is really only one switchboard form in the database. The changes to its buttons and captions are made by VBA program code. All this happens automatically and it means that you can get a consistent style for your entire application by just modifying this one master form.

Once you have set up your switchboards you can go to the Forms tab of the Database Window and edit the Switchboard form that you find there. Its default appearance appears to be plain turquoise but if you investigate then you will find that it is made up of a number of components:

A few minutes work leaves you with a form which looks a lot better:

All that I have done is to add a picture, remove Label2 and the VerticalShadowBox, change some colours and the styles of the OptionLabels and make the buttons a bit bigger.

The only unusual feature here is the icon on the Exit button. It's possible because the main switchboard is the only form that has five buttons on it. I added the exit icon to the fifth button of the eight on the Switchboard form knowing that it would only ever be visible on this one form.

Switchboards are not perfect as a user interface but they work and the wizard lets you set them up very quickly. If you are writing something that will only be used by yourself or by a few people in your department then switchboard forms are very effective.